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Recent Filipino immigrant Cora Maming in action at the Collingwood Neighbourhood House, where she volunteers in Vancouver, BC., June 15, 2012.

Photograph by: Nick Procaylo
, PNG

Cora Maming was terrified to answer the phone when she arrived in Vancouver from the Philippines four years ago at age 63 because she was embarrassed at not being able to speak English.

At the time, Maming lived with her daughter in the Joyce-Collingwood area, home to a large Filipino population. But when she did brave what she felt was terribly cold weather to go for walks in the neighbourhood, she rarely spoke to people even in her own language because her son had warned her not to talk to strangers.

It was a lonely, isolating existence. Maming spent her days watching television and staring out the window.

"I said to my daughter, 'I'd like to go home because I'm lonely here,'" she recalled.

Several months after her arrival, Maming ventured with her daughter into Collingwood Neighbourhood House, where her daughter also happened to work, and signed up for ESL classes.

She was the only Filipina in the first session she attended. The teacher asked someone to read a passage in English. Tentatively, Maming raised her hand and when she started reading, it was clear she needed to be in a much higher-level English class. She helped her Chinese, Iranian and Mexican classmates with their lessons.

"That is the first time I have many, many friends in a different language," she said.

It was the beginning of her transformation from a frightened new immigrant living in an ethnic bubble to a woman at the centre of her community who all the other seniors, regardless of ethnic background, now call "mama."

Maming has made a concerted effort to get involved in her community, but a recent Vancouver Foundation survey of 3,841 Metro residents suggests many of us do not.

"We vote less, give less, volunteer less and join less," said the report, released earlier this week. "This fraying of community engagement leads to indifference and a corrosion of caring and compassion — a retreat from the very things that make our community a good place to live."

While 83 per cent of respondents said they have been to a community centre or library recently, a majority have not attended a religious service or community meeting or participated in a neighbourhood project in the last year. Just 13 per cent said they attended a city council or school board meeting. About half of respondents have not volunteered in the past year, with those aged 18-24 the most likely and 25-34-year-olds the least likely to have done so.

When asked about the obstacles to participation in community life, it was not a lack of time that topped the list, but rather a feeling among respondents that they do not have much to offer, a finding that struck the Vancouver Foundation's Catherine Clement as one of the survey's biggest surprises.

There were also bright spots in the results. Two-thirds of respondents reported experiencing no discrimination in their day-to-day life and 70 per cent said they felt welcome in Metro Vancouver and that they belonged.

However, the results also suggested people think Metro Vancouver is fragmented along ethnic and cultural lines. Two-thirds of respondents agreed that while most people are tolerant of different ethnic groups, most prefer to be with others from a similar background. Almost half agreed that people who live here and don't speak English aren't trying hard enough to be part of the community and 55 per cent feel there is too much foreign ownership of real estate. Forty-two per cent of respondents said they had not been to an event put on by an ethnic group other than their own and about a third said they do not have a close friend outside their own ethnic group.

There are some benefits to ethnic enclaves, especially for first-generation immigrants, Clement said. These communities give people a mooring with others who share a similar culture and background and provide a foothold in the new country, she noted, but in the long run they can prevent communities from effectively addressing some of the bigger issues.

Norman Kong remembers the difficulty he had making meaningful connections with people when he arrived in Vancouver from Hong Kong in 1993. He made an effort to talk to people in places like bus stops, but found people "put up walls" and were defensive when he asked them questions about themselves. Since then, he said, it has become much easier.

"It's easier if you have people in a single cultural group or language ... but if you have diversity then you can learn something new from [another] culture. I can talk to my neighbour about his Italian background and about cooking and ... gardening."

Kong, who is an artist, now volunteers at a South Vancouver Neighbourhood House program that pairs newly arrived immigrants with longtime residents of the community, helping them establish new social networks across ethnic lines. Kong even received a grant from the Vancouver Foundation to help people in the program create a painting illustrating what they want their community to look like, which now hangs in one of the classrooms at the neighbourhood house.

"We find that people are able to feel more comfortable when they're in a social situation where there's some fun going on, where there's ways that they can communicate that are not so reliant on language," said neighbourhood house executive director Karen Larcombe.

A little farther east, at Collingwood Neighbourhood House, Maming, now 67, gives the lesson plan she photocopied from her ESL text book to an instructor who is teaching about 25 Chinese seniors what the words 'dinner' and 'supper' mean. Maming monitors the students' progress and selects the lessons from the text book she believes are appropriate.

She also recruits seniors from the area to join the weekly walks at the neighbourhood house, which are followed by free tea and coffee. She personally calls everyone who has signed up if the time has to be changed or the weather looks bad. In the last two years, she has organized a neighbourhood block party and an earthquake preparedness workshop — which was followed later that day by an actual earthquake. This year, she is organizing a Halloween pumpkin carving contest and costume party. Her husband complains that he never sees her.

Maming said she is too busy in her community to miss the Philippines. It's too hot there, she said, and there are hardly any parks.

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